60% of Americans engaging in couch potato multitasking

Many of us just spent several hours on Sunday night watching the healthcare bill debate on CSPAN while simultaneously chatting, making forum posts, or Tweeting about it. We may be used to it, but that behavior is no longer reserved for us nerds. According to the latest Three Screen report (PDF) out of Nielsen, Americans in general now spend 35 percent more time using the Internet and TV at the same time than a year prior.

That translates to about 3.5 hours of overlapping TV/Internet time per month for the average American consumer, according to Nielsen's data from the fourth quarter of 2009. Nearly 59 percent of consumers reported doing this at least once a month as well, up from 57.5 percent in 2008. That's a lot of people spreading their attention across multiple screens, which is why so many shows are beginning to advertise live online polls, chats, and more during the course of broadcast. People aren't just hitting up those websites after the show is over—they're hitting them up as the show is going on.

These numbers don't count those who are watching TV on the Internet itself, though. Online video consumption is up 16 percent year over year, with close to half (44 percent) of all online video being consumed at the workplace. Shh, don't tell your boss (who is probably watching The Colbert Report right now anyway).

Despite this, the firm notes that most Americans are still only using online video to catch up with regular programming or if the TV is unavailable for whatever reason. "It is not typically a replacement for TV viewing," Nielsen wrote in its report. This much is obvious from the numbers: Americans spend an average of almost 35 hours per month in front of the traditional boob tube and another 2 hours watching timeshifted TV from a DVR. Watching video on the Internet by itself only accounted for an average of 22 minutes per month, with the 25-34 age group watching the most.

The third screen in Nielsen's Three Screen report is the mobile phone. Nielsen says the growth of the smartphone market is responsible for the large increase in mobile video users, and streaming (as opposed to taking video downloads with them on their phones) is the most common way for people to watch video on the go. With the plethora of iPhone and Android apps that allow users to easily watch content on the fly, we're not at all surprised to hear this. Still, when compared to the overall TV-watching audience, the amount of video being watched while mobile is miniscule, at an average of 4 minutes per month.

These trends have been reflected in past reports from Nielsen, which made the same observation nearly a year ago that the majority of all video is still consumed on the TV. People's overall media consumption continues to go up, however—it's easier than ever today to be online and watching TV at the same time, and perhaps even watching video on both. After all, it's not unheard of to have a movie going on in the background while you surf the Web and check out some YouTube clips—or maybe that's just my house.

Jacqui Cheng
Jacqui is an Editor at Large at Ars Technica, where she has spent the last eight years writing about Apple culture, gadgets, social networking, privacy, and more. Emailjacqui@arstechnica.com//Twitter@eJacqui

34 Reader Comments

I actually spend more time on the computer with a TV on as background noise than I do watching TV and supplimenting that with computer activities. Of course, I tend to spend 14-18 hours per day on a computer /shrug.

This is exactly what the iPad is going to target. I find myself using my iPhone more and more to glance at IMDB or keep up on the news while I'm watching a show or movie. The iPad looks like a nice middle ground between the convenience, but small screen of the iPhone and the laptop which can be a little hard to balance while laying on the couch.

I feel like I'm wasting time just "watching" TV. It's very rare that I'm not looking at something online, or eating, or cooking, or whatever. The TV (or whatever I'm playing on my laptop) is just noise to fill the air. On occasion I do mostly watch a show or movie, if it's something I haven't seen before, but as soon as I've seen it once, it gets dropped back to background noise.

This is the downside to computers being so useful. I regular administer 5-6 computers, PC and Mac, from my main machine at J-List. I could get off my ass and walk to the computer I need to fix, but no...

44% at work? It's one thing to peruse Ars or Google News, it's another to stream video, isn't it? Or am I way off base?

How is it different? Either it is related to your job, or it isn't. The actual form of media is irrelevant.

On campus, if you must stream media the tech would prefer if you use the multicast DATN channels as they don't require extra bandwidth. When UW is playing in March Madness last year, they encouraged people who were streaming to stream with DATN (in HD) and not to go to espn360 or stream another way because it was using an extra 500Mbit/second or so of bandwidth whereas the DATN use is 'free' insomuch as it only uses the existing stream already going into departments, assuming someone is streaming.

So while a lot of businesses frown on the time waste, most live with it as part of employee efficiency. If your employees do a better job, they'll get better marks during their reviews anyhow.

Gee, and I thought I was a rare case. I have the TV on most of the day, while I'm working on websites. I have a bookmark for the TV guide, so that if something other than news or relevant non-view-dependent content comes on, where I'm so-called-watching, I can quickly find a station that has the appropriate content. The trusty (programmable) universal remote is on one arm of the chair. My real breaks from the computer are for intensive news in the morning, noon, evening, and at bedtime.

Count me as one that's on the internet when watching TV. I don't do it all the time, but I definitely do it.

I have a MacBook that I'll often use it. Only problem is having to grab it and open it gets old. With my iPhone, I can use it for quick little things that I like to look up.

Seeing the iPad, it looks absolutely perfect for TV surfing. Don't have to open it like a laptop and it has a screen the size of one. Plus, the thing is super light. I want an iPad, but then I don't know what I'd use my MacBook for. 99% of the use I get out of my MacBook is couch surfing. Then again, typing on the iPad won't be that great compared to the MacBook.

This is exactly what the iPad is going to target. I find myself using my iPhone more and more to glance at IMDB or keep up on the news while I'm watching a show or movie. The iPad looks like a nice middle ground between the convenience, but small screen of the iPhone and the laptop which can be a little hard to balance while laying on the couch.

Exactly. Just took a little bit of understanding of how the vast majority of people want to use computers to figure out that that ipad market is huge.

Both my girlfriend and I cannot sit in front of the TV without being able to surf. A couple years ago I replaced the living room furniture and using laptops in front of the TV was a consideration. I ended up with a recliner and couch that have 10" wide flat armrests that are easy to balance a laptop on.

There was this talk about broadband Internet for every home by the year of 2020. So I give it another 10 years over that and by 2030 or may be even sooner and when 24, Lost, Prison Break all together finished their sessions. TV will be the thing in the past.

My wife is worse than all of this. Last week I came home and found that she was playing Farmville on the TV (via my gaming PC) while watching America's Next Top Model via Hulu on her laptop. I laughed for a good five minutes.

I think that the percentage who would watch TV on their computers would probably go up if if better bandwidth were available. The best I can get is 2.5 Mb/sec, which just doesn't cut it.

2.5Mbit should be plenty - I just moved out of a place that had really bad "1Mbit" DSL that was more like 768k most of the time, and it was able to play hulu/netflix on minimum quality (looks like youtube) with occasional buffering. if it was actually working at 1Mbit, it'd be minimum quality with no buffering.

My HDTV is primarily used as a 1920x1080 monitor for my computer. Sometimes it's a monitor for my PS3, which might as well be a computer (it does run Linux after all). I save about $100 per month by not paying for cable, and instead I buy an Internet connection suitable to watch all the TV we want online. Between Hulu, Netflix Watch-it-Now, and all the channel's own web sites, we get all the same TV content we want on-demand and a-la-carte at a much lower overall price. I will never go back to cable.

I'm patient enough to wait for pay-channel content like HBO and Showtime to come in via Netflix, which I know is rare. I'm not into sports, but live streaming is available for most sports, at better prices than cable. If pay cable channels would wise up and put their "On Demand" services on the Internet, they would be getting a lot more customers, and much more leverage with the cable networks.

Cable TV and RF broadcast need to die -- the Internet can use the bandwidth they are monopolizing much more effectively. They have outlived their usefulness, now that the Internet has both replaced and exceeded them in every way.

Couch multitasking? More like computer chair multitasking.(with NCIS or AOTS on in the background) I must be on societies cutting edge then.

Same here.I own no tivi, but a 16:10 20" computer screen (a tad small, soon to be replace by a 26" one), where I surf AND watch shows (cable shows and web shows like Rocketboom) every evening.2/3 of the screen is used for Firefox.1/5 is used for Miro or Media Player Classic.The rest is used for file or media browsing.